BRITAIN’s biggest holding centre for asylum-seekers is branded unsafe and unstable by a prison watchdog’s report published today.

The Harmondsworth centre near Heathrow has increasing levels of disorder, assaults, escape attempts and damage, including arson attacks, according to the report from Anne Owers, the Chief Inspector of Prisons.

The inspection team found that the centre had dealt with 11 suicide attempts in the month before the inspection. On average, one inmate a week attempted self-harm.

The report is published as the Yarls Wood centre in Bedfordshire is reopened after rioters took control last year and started fires which devastated buildings.

At Harmondsworth, which is run under an eight-year contract by UK Detentions Ltd, the inspectors found that there were no facilities for a “lock down” to prevent similar serious rioting.

A lock down involves closing off areas of a prison or centre so that inmates are contained in their cells or rooms to prevent disorder from spreading and overwhelming staff. Harmondsworth was originally built to handle 3,000 detainees a year. It now deals with 12,000, and many of its problems stem from the wide diversity of its inmates.

They include overstayers, illegal immigrants, failed asylum-seekers awaiting deportation, people waiting for a final decision and detainees needing segregation because of their violence.

The inspectorate found that the centre suffered an average of ten incidents a month, seven assaults a week and five attempted arsons in the five months before the inspection was carried out last year.

Three quarters of the detainees surveyed by the inspection team had been in the centre for more than a month and 20 per cent of those admitted in the previous month were families with children.

Twenty-five children were kept in a separate family unit at Harmondsworth, but the staffing was too low to ensure their security or give help to families.

The report said that, given “the inherent insecurity” of the centre, children should be held at Harmondsworth only in exceptional circumstances and not for more than seven days.

The reception system for Harmondsworth was also heavily criticised. Some detainees, including a pregnant woman and her family, had to wait in vans for hours before being admitted.

Programmes to curb suicide attempts, bullying or self-harm were poorly managed. The centre’s suicide awareness team was unaware that there had been 11 incidents in the month before the inspection and had no information from healthcare officers.

The report concludes: “We find that Harmondsworth was neither a safe nor respectful environment. Some of this was undoubtedly the result of the actions of a few of the detainees whose cases had reached the end, who had no incentive to co-operate and who had taken part in vandalism or arson.”

The inspectors found that the centre failed the tests set by Ms Owers’s team for a “healthy” institution and the report makes 114 recommendations.

Responding to the report, Beverley Hughes, the Immigration Minister, said that it raised serious issues, but the inspection was carried out a year ago. The recommendations would be studied.

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